Hey, everyone.

Just wanted to solicit some feedback from folks coming to the Summit who might be interested in my talk.

I'm curious to find out what kinds of issues you face in your day to day work around taxonomy and metadata. Is it mainly design methods and techniques, or business team buy-in, or it is finding the right balance of user input?

Please feel free to send me your thoughts.

I've copied the presentation abstract below.

Thanks!

Dave

"In the past couple of years, much attention has been paid to user-organized, user-generated content. There has even been a certain amount of talk about the end of taxonomies. But in spite of the rise of tagging and wikis, taxonomy has not decreased in importance. Indeed, it appears that taxonomies are becoming more important to the work we do as metadata and ontologies extend their reach further into the user experience.

This presentation has three goals:

* to demonstrate the virtues of thinking of taxonomy in terms of the user experience and not simply as data or classification

* to introduce ways of talking about taxonomy that clearly communicate its value to the business and help promote taxonomy as a practice

* to illustrate how to craft a user-centric taxonomy by examining several e-commerce redesign case studies

Attendees will also be presented with both a conceptual framework and examples for understanding taxonomy as user experience that can be leveraged when discussing taxonomy with the business to create buy-in.

The overall presentation will be kept to 30 minutes to allow open discussion about the challenges and successes audience members have experienced during their own taxonomy projects.

The presentation is best suited for beginner and intermediate practitioners; however, all IA practitioners will benefit from discussion on selling taxonomy."